Page 7 of Crawl
Maybe it’s good that my stepdad left Key West. He’s still alive, and I’m not in jail.
But jail doesn’t scare me. If I can stop someone like my stepdad, it’s worth it.
Cash is another bad egg.
Still carrying the knife, I step up the stairs, careful not to let them creak. At the end of the hallway, his office door is open, and so are the two bedrooms and the bathroom across from them. But the room on the left is closed.
Which is precisely why I want to open it. Screw his rules.
I open the door as slowly as I can, holding my breath, but it stays silent. I let out a breath. Light from the hallway spills into the room. Wet concrete covers each space where there should be a window. Like he wants to keep something, orsomeone,inside.
What the hell?
His desk chair squeaks, the sound drifting down the hallway, and I jump, closing the door behind me. I bound down the stairs, no longer trying to keep my presence a secret. I have no idea what he’s doing with that room, but it seems like his compulsion with blinds and newspaper coverings on overdrive.
But why is it fresh if he’s ‘taken to leaving the windows open’?
My phone buzzes in my pocket, erasing those thoughts from my head. On the screen, a picture of my mom and me illuminates the screen. It’s from before she divorced my stepdad, and in it, I’m tattoo-less and have pink lips. I check my surroundings; the stairs are empty and the place is silent. I answer the call.
“Hey,” I say in a quiet voice.
“How’s your first day so far?” Mom asks.
“It’s only been an hour,” I wrinkle my nose. “You don’t have to worry like this anymore. I’m twenty-five. I’ll be fine.”
“I just know how you get sometimes, sweetie.”
My gut twists. This is how she acknowledges it, with these strange, subtle questions and statements, like it physically hurts her to directly address the fact that my stepdad abused me and she didn’t notice.
Which is why she doesn’t know the reason I wanted this job so badly.
“How is he?” she asks.
He’s an untrustworthy jerk with creepy eyes and a cocky attitude. Basically, he’s like every rich asshole in the Keys.
“He’s fine,” I say. And if it weren’t for what he did to Jenna, it would almost be true. “I’m ordering cat food right now.”
“He has a cat?”
“Yep. And the boss-hole wants the best for his little puss,” I say. Bones lifts her head and jumps into my lap. I scratch behind her ears and she purrs, nuzzling my stomach. I like her. It’s not her fault that she’s owned by a jerk.
“I met someone,” Mom says. My fingers stop in Bones’s fur, and I breathe through my nose, waiting for Mom to explain. “I was thinking we could get together soon, so you could meet him too. Maybe a double date.”
My head pulses. “Who?”
“He’s new to town. Why don’t you see if that boy from the police department wants to join us?”
I roll my eyes, screaming inside. What’s with Mom’s and Jenna’s obsession with him? That ‘boy’ is thepictureof a good man, and that’s why I don’t trust him. A cop. A mama’s boy. A supposed protector. People in power always take advantage of everyone below them. I mean,everyonetakes advantage of everyone, butespeciallypeople like them. People like my stepdad. Men with power over others.
Men like Cash.
I almost considered ‘that boy from the police department,’ after he promised to investigate my stepdad years ago, claiming it was why he wanted to become a cop: to bring people to justice. But it was a lie to cover up the guilt. Everyone knows he drugged and raped that girl from our high school.
Still, my mother and Jenna hold on to him like he’s the best thing to happen to Key West. They believe him.
“I’d rather not,” I say, a sourness in my words.
“Are you still seeing that professor, then?” she asks. “He’s nice.”
